The principal objective of this research is to evaluate and exploit lower marine organisms as a source of new types of central nervous and cardiovascular active compounds. The initial objective will be to fractionate the crude extracts of 20 marine organisms (sponges and coelenterates) determined from prior testing in our laboratories to have significant levels of activities on central nervous and cardio-vascular systems. Fractionation will be guided at every stage by pharmacological testing and pure active principles will be subjected to structure determination by conventional spectroscopic and degradative methods or by single crystal x-ray diffraction. Additional marine organisms will continually be collected from various geographical locations either by the grant personnel or professional collectors and their extracts submitted for pharmacological evaluation here at the University of Oklahoma.